Yi Jian Mei, a Chinese pop song from 1983, has unexpectedly became a hit all over the Internet worldwide.
It has even occupied the top spot on Spotify’s viral chart in more than one country, such as Norway and New Zealand, and it’s second in Sweden and Finland over the past few days. Related topics also have got millions of views.
"Yi Jian Mei" was first sung by the singer-songwriter Fei Yu-ching from the island of Taiwan in 1983 and has been extremely popular for decades in Chinese culture. Last September, he announced his retirement from the entertainment industry and now we can hardly see his latest news in the media. Then why is this song all over the Internet all of a sudden?
The earliest clues can be found on Kuaishou, one of the most popular video apps in China. On January 6, a typecast actor named “Brother Egg” in his Kuaishou account (a TikTok-like app in China) posted a 10-second video of himself singing the song’s iconic line.
The Asian man in the video is named Zhang Aiqin and is a actor-turned-director and movie producer in Beijing. He was born with a sharp egg-shaped head, which earned him the nickname "Dan Ge (the Eggman, or Brother Egg)." His addictive performance combined with the classical melody gained momentum, circulating widely on global social platforms. Netizens vied for imitation and uploaded their own videos of singing "Yi Jian Mei".
Many hilarious comments and memes were born.
I wanna learn Chinese all of a sudden
I don’t know Chinese, but when he sang this line, I felt the snow and wind
We wil be good friends if you know this meme
With the popularity of XUE HUA PIAO PIAO BEI FENG XIAO XIAO, people began to express more emotions with this line.
Someone translated the line into English: “The snow falls and the wind blows.” As the world grappled with the coronavirus pandemic and hunkered down at home, this line perfectly expressed how people were feeling. And the explanation has also been commonly used: “Life has reached a low point, and the environment has gradually deteriorated, but there is nothing to do about it.”
Apart from spoof, some netizens pointed out that the song itself was really of high quality.
